Every now and then, don’t you love just licking your wounds?  I do. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I do.

This last week has been hard for me.  I won’t bore you with details, but the cumulative effect of negative comments (from others), negative thoughts (from me), and negative actions (again, from me) have rallied viciously against my normally cheerful demeanor.  This last week has left me feeling weak, incompetent, and bruised.  I have been feeling far below average as a wife, mother, and woman.  But more than any of those feelings, what I have really been feeling is sorry for myself.

Oh, how I love feeling sorry for myself.

When you were a kid, did you ever roll up a piece of aluminum foil into a little toothpick and rub it against the filling in your back molar?  Didn’t that just hurt-so-good?  I loved doing that.  I’d screw my face up and cringe, knowing the tickle-torture that was coming as the foil wavered from my hand to my mouth.   I could have stopped at anytime, but for some reason I just didn’t want to. So I’d rub that tooth and savor that agony over and over and over again.  It’s the same with self-pity, I guess.

Even if my problems are small (they usually are), even if my problems are my fault (they usually are), there’s something intrinsically delightful about wallowing in a wave of Woe-Is-Me.  I love metaphorically rubbing my hands together, adding up all the injustices that have befallen me–real or imagined, present or past.  Should the mood beset me,  I’ll resurrect rude comments and faulty behavior from years, even decades, back.  I’ll reach far into the corners of my mind (where I keep all such memories simmering) and  pull my favorites off the back burner to warm them over, yet again, with whatever recent injury I’m cooking up today.

I’ve found that combining old and new offenses make for particularly tasty dishes:  a forgotten slight from a childhood friend mixed with a recently rude comment from a relative; an adolescent insecurity parceled out against a current self-doubt;  comparing my younger self to a younger perfect person I once knew and then my older self to an older perfect person I know now.  And it doesn’t matter who this perfect person is, because when I’m in this kind of mood, Everyone Else is Perfect and I’m Not.  (Your name is surely on the list.)

And finally, there’s my favorite molar-foiler-good-mood-spoiler of all time:   spreading an ancient, useless regret across a current life situation with which I am dissatisfied.  Isn’t it delicious, blaming something now on something then?  Removes any chance for change and any need for work, since even the hardest work can’t change the past.  The decision was made and the die cast; nothin’ I can do about it now! What a great way to get myself off the hook. (And no, I’m not talking about my marriage here. It’s not that bad, my faiths!)

Whipping up these dishes of despair does nothing to cure what ails me, but is it ever satisfying to whip them up.  A slow, sweet burn as I rake myself over those coals.  I can stop at anytime, but for some reason, I just don’t want to.

So my goal for next week?  A brighter outlook. Funny how these things seem dark and dire or small and silly, depending on the tilt of my lens. Next week, I’m going to wallow less and do more.  Next week, I’m going to feel less and think more.  Next week, I’m going to stop talking about my little problems and start doing something about them.  I am, I really am.

Just as soon as I finish writing this post.

In the wake of the Tiger Mother‘s monstrous success, it would seem there’s yet another twisting of the knife for anxious American parents:  Bringing up Bebe.  This book, written by an American woman raising her son in France, outlines the relaxed but authoritative approach French parents take to raising their children, and how the Parisian parent and child are both happier for it.  No Mandarin tutors or math drills here; French parents sip coffee and socialize while their toddlers peacefully “discover the world at their own pace.”  But when it’s time to sleep through the night or eat highbrow food (no dino nuggets, Mme.?), their children are expected to behave like adults.  French children, according to the author, are generally polite (they are taught to make eye contact with and greet adults), quiet, and able to entertain themselves amongst adults, knowing that Mom is nearby–but not hovering over–them.  Unlike their helicopter-parenting American counterparts, French mothers maintain their own identities as women, adults, and professionals, rather than molding every corner of their lives around their children.

So it would seem, based on the polarity of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Bringing up Bebe, that we mothers are confronted with the merits of overparenting and underparenting.  And as I take a good look around,  it would seem that my own mothering has failed on both counts.  I’m not demanding enough to be a Tiger Mother, but I’m far too high-strung to be Poodle Mom.  It would seem that I am about as typical an overworrying, overindulgent, overthinking, underdisciplining American Mom as they come.  Oopsie.

I have not read Bringing up Bebe, but I have to admit that I probably will.  For all the controversy around Tiger Mother it was, in the end, a terrific read and I’m guessing Bebe will be, too.  The funny thing is this:  I’m really not jealous of the fabulous children these women raise; fabulous children I have.  It’s these women’s fabulous lives that I covet. I want to live in Paris, hang out in bistros, and then write a bestseller about it.  Then I want to live in New Haven, teach law at Yale, vacation around the globe, and write a bestseller about that, too.  Oh, and if I could produce flawlessly manicured children along the way–you know, just to succeed in that little area–perhaps I’d write about that, too.  And dang if I wouldn’t be stylish, thin and pretty while doing it all. I’d look good while making you look bad. (That’s what we good mothers do best.)

So with all this wistfulness raging through me, I’m thinking it’s time to put up or shut up.  Therefore, I’ve decided to write a memoir of my own, based on my own dramatic parenting journey.  I’ll give it a snappy title, something like:  Bringing Up Brattie:  Why American Mothers are Less Successful but Much Cooler than Foreign Ones.  I’ll fill the book with warm and witty anecdotes pulled from my real-life experiences, such as:

• How, during the long, dark toddler years, our Wii saved my life and my marriage.
• How the fact that my seven-year old son avoids eye contact with, and refuses to speak to, adults is a good thing.  (No, really.  For everybody.)
• How devastated our family was when McDonald’s quite supersizing anything.  It was supposed to make our nation skinnier, but all it meant for me was that I could no longer order a ten-piece nugget and extra-large drink to feed three kids for under six bucks.  (And thank you, Costco hot dogs, for filling in the gap.)
• How building an identity solely around my children excuses me from a lot of housework, personal grooming, and, of course, writing bestsellers.
• How, as American mothers, we must sanctimoniously give up our lives for our children because, really: what else would we blog about?